Institute of Race Relations weekly digest - Against Racism, for Social Justice

IRR News (20 October – 2 November 2017)

Institute of Race Relations weekly digest - Against Racism, for Social Justice

Dear IRR News subscriber,

This week saw the long-awaited publication of the Home Office commissioned report on deaths in police custody by Dame Elish Angiolini. With its analysis of the harms done by police callousness or worse, investigative timidity and bureaucratic delays, and its 110 recommendations for improved practice, the report may provide somehope for the bereaved families whose experiences are at its heart. When it comes to race, her findings echo those of the IRR’s 2015 report, Dying for Justice: a disproportionate number of people who died following police use of force were from BAME communities, and such deaths, in particular of young black men, resonate with the black community’s experience of systemic racism. The government has adopted some of the recommendations, but as Frances Webber says, it needs to embrace of all of them, and to provide the resources and commitment to push them through, to reduce the dreadful death toll and to ensure bereaved families’ quest for justice is not thwarted yet again.

Twenty-eight years after the Hillsborough disaster in which ninety-six people lost their lives, Bishop James Jones, asked by the government to ‘ensure the pain and suffering of the families is not repeated’ has reported. His calls for a change of attitude to bereaved families and the necessity of candour from the police reinforce the recommendations in the Angiolini report.